Welcome to the penultimate lecture of the series on humans treaties, but one today we're going to be finishing off one for two.
Scepticism with regard to the senses and moving fairly rapidly through the
next few sections I'm up to and including the discussion of personal identity.
So a reminder of where we were last time we looked at scepticism with regard to reason that street is one for one.
And we saw that Hume presents an argument which he seems to think is a good argument for total scepticism,
though he also says that he himself can't accept it. And his account of that is that belief comes from feeling rather than reason.
And then he one for two, he goes on to scepticism with regard to the senses. That is our belief in external body.
And he's trying to find out where that comes from. He thinks that our ordinary belief in external bodies, that the vulgar belief,
not the belief of philosophers like Locke involves attributing a distinct continued existence to the very things we feel or see,
in other words, to our impressions of sensations so that the vulgar don't draw a distinction between impressions of sensation and objects.
They take it. They are directly acquainted with the objects.
Such a belief, Hume says, it's entirely unreasonable. It can't derive from the senses or from reason, so it must arise from the imagination.
And he sets out to explain how it arises from the imagination, focussing particularly on the constancy and coherence of impressions.
So he thinks the fact that when I look at an object, look away, look back, the perception that I see is so similar.
That leads me to think that there is some uniform thing there right through.
So the very thing that I perceive that directly,
I am seduced by the similarity into thinking that it continues to exist even when I'm not perceiving it.
Coherency puts less emphasis on coherence with the example he gives is of a fire burning down where I'm so used to seeing the fire
in the great diminish over an hour or two that if I fall asleep in the middle and then wake up and see that it has diminished.
I, I think of it as a continuing thing because my perceptions are coherent with those that I've seen before.
OK, so scepticism with regard to the senses continued. So let's first of all, look at Hume's summary of the account he's about to give.
When we have been accustomed to observe a constant scene, certain impressions and have found that the perception of the sun or ocean, for instance,
returns upon us after an absence or annihilation with like parts and in a like order, as at its first appearance,
we are not apt to regard these interrupted perceptions as different, which they really are.
But on the contrary, consider them individually the same upon account of their resemblance.
But as this interruption of their existence is contrary to their perfect identity and makes us regard the first impression as annihilated.
And the second as newly created, we find ourselves somewhat at a loss and are involved in a kind of contradiction.
In order to free ourselves from this difficulty, we disguise as much as possible the interruption or rather remove it entirely by supposing that
these interrupted perceptions are connected by a real existence of which we are insensible.
This supposition or idea of continued existence acquires a false and vivacity from the memory of
these broken impressions and from that propensity which they give us to suppose them the same.
And the very essence of belief consists in the false and vivacity of the conception.
OK, so that's a summary of the account that he's going to give.
He gives a four part account. I'm not going to go in full detail through this.
It's enough to have a general idea of what's going on, and I would advise you to read through the text guided by this summary.
Don't worry too much if there are bits of the text that you find confusing as long as you've got the overall picture, that's fine.
OK, so you've got the principle of individuation, how resemblance leads us to attribute identity to interrupt your perceptions,
why we unite interrupted perceptions by feigning a continuing being and then explaining the false and vivacity of conception which constitutes belief.
One important point here a distinction between Hume's treatment of the external world and for example, causation is that in this case,
it turns out that the belief in continued existence that we have doesn't actually involve a genuine idea.
It involves a kind of fiction. And Hume isn't terribly explicit about exactly the status of these fictions.
It seems that he gives them quite an important role in our intellectual life, but it's almost as though there's some third category.
You've got impressions, ideas and you've got fictions.
And the fiction arises from a sort of confusion because we have impressions that have constancy.
In other words, they resemble each other, but they're interrupted, and then we confuse them in our mind because of the similarity.
And that confusion gives rise to this fiction, which isn't actually a bona fide idea,
but nevertheless enables us somehow to support a belief in the external world.
So if you find that a bit confusing? Well, it is human, doesn't really get very explicit on how this is all supposed to fit in.
Another thing that can make the discussion somewhat confusing is that over 15 or so paragraphs of the section.
Hugh explicitly makes a decision to speak with the vulgar.
He says the vulgar do not distinguish between impressions and objects.
They think the impressions just are the objects. So in order to explain the vulgar theory,
Hume is going to refer to that thing indifferently as object or perception as according it as it shall best suit my purpose.
So he's going to speak with the vulgar. He's going to use the same term.
He's not going to distinguish in his explanation between the object and the perception.
Now, if you think about it, that's a very odd move to make.
It's very odd to suppose that a scientific account, because that's what's humans trying to give,
trying to give a psychological account of how a particular belief comes into being.
So it's very odd to think that a psychological account of a belief of ours.
Has to be phrased in the same terms as the believer.
I mean, on the contrary, many explanations of what we do,
how we reason actually require a theoretical understanding of things that would not be at all obvious to the naive thinker.
Right. So Hume here is putting himself in a strange position where he's trying to explain how
our beliefs come about and indeed how they come about by sub cognitive mechanisms,
unconscious mechanisms. And yet he's denying himself the ability to distinguish in that explanation between the impression and the object.
So this is rather a peculiar thing to do.
OK. Now, after he's explained how the vulgar view arises in the way we've sketched, he emphasises that it involves a lot of falsehood and error.
It involves false attribution of identity. We're thinking of the impressions as identical when they're not identical, they're different.
It involves the fiction of a continued existence, which is really false, he says,
but serves to remedy the interruption of our perceptions and experiments reveal that the doctrine
of the independent existence of our sensible perceptions is contrary to the plainest experience.
So this is the key experiment. Press and I with a finger, you will immediately perceive all objects double.
We don't want to attribute a continued existence to both these perceptions, we don't actually think that objects double up when we press our right.
But the perceptions of both of the same nature, they are both produced by our visual senses in the same sort of way.
We clearly perceive that all our perceptions are dependent on our organs and the disposition of our nerves and animal spirits.
So he's pointing to a fairly familiar kind of experience or an experiment.
He calls it to say, Look, the vulgar system is clearly wrong in identifying objects and perceptions.
Now, philosophers realise this, of course,
philosophers realise that we do not directly perceive the objects we need to draw a distinction between perceptions and objects.
But philosophies find themselves in a bind.
Hume has argued earlier that there is no good, rational basis for arguing from impressions to objects that calls them.
Remember that argument? We only ever perceive the perceptions, we don't perceive the objects,
so we can't establish a causal connexion between the the perceptions and the object, and therefore we cannot rationally infer from one to the other.
That's why the belief in external objects can't be founded on reason.
But philosophers like Locke are therefore in a difficult position,
they've realised that the they're and that the perceptions are not the objects that the vulgar think they are.
On the other hand, they're very reluctant to give up the natural belief in a continuing existent.
So they invent a new theory, not on the basis of any rational argument,
but simply because they cannot relinquish this in this imaginative, instinctive belief in the continued existence.
So they invent a new theory of the existence of perceptions and objects as a palliative remedy remedies this tension that they feel.
But this has no primary recommendation either to reason or the imagination and acquires all its imaginative appeal from the vulgar view.
So it's because we have this vulgar tendency to attribute identity to objects, even though that's completely false.
It gives us a very strong inclination to believe in that.
There is something identical, something continuing. And the philosophers are subject to that.
So in spelling out the points, Hume repeats and expand some of his earlier arguments,
and I've summarised some of the main points here at paragraph 47 is where he's most explicit
about this argument about reason being incapable of inferring from perceptions to objects.
He sketched it earlier. He now spells it out a bit more. The imagination leads naturally to the vulgar view, rather than the philosophical view.
The philosophical view, since it can't be based on reason,
must be acquiring all its force from the vulgar view and various aspects of it can be explained accordingly.
The conclusion of all this.
I cannot conceive how such trivial qualities of the fancy conducted by such false suppositions can ever lead to any solid and rational system.
Philosophies deny our resembling perceptions to be identically the same.
And uninterrupted and yet have so great a propensity to believe them,
such that they arbitrarily invent a new set of perceptions to which they attribute these qualities.
I say a new set of perceptions because it is impossible for us distinctly to conceive objects to be in their nature,
anything but exactly the same with perceptions.
What then, can we look for from this confusion of groundless and extraordinary opinions, but error and falsehood?
And how can we justify to ourselves any belief that we repose in them?
One important point there notice when Hume says, I say a new set of perceptions there,
he's appealing to his empiricism because all our ideas are derived from impressions.
The only conception we can form of external objects is based on impressions.
So when philosophers imagine that there are objects somehow behind the impressions,
actually the only conception they can form of those objects is based on impressions.
So they are effectively inventing arbitrarily a new set of impressions.
So this all looks pretty awful and.
Concluding it is impossible upon any system to defend either our understanding or senses, so he's alluding back to one four one one four one.
He showed that our reason, if followed consistently will actually lead to total lack of belief.
Now he's shown that our belief in our senses in external bodies can't be defended.
We but expose them, father, when we endeavour to justify them in that manner,
as the sceptical doubt arises naturally from a profound and intense reflection on those subjects.
It always increases the farther we carry our reflections, whether in opposition or conformity to it.
Carelessness and inattention alone can afford us any remedy.
So here we have a. The idea that if we think seriously about the sceptical arguments.
We will basically they will completely destroy all our belief.
The only remedy is just to ignore them. So we'll see this later.
Hume says, you know, I dying. I play a game of backgammon. I make merry with my friends and I forget all these sceptical worries.
And it seems to be at least in this mood that humans are saying that's the only way we can avoid scepticism.
If we seriously follow the arguments, they will inevitably lead us to scepticism.
OK, so we've got a radically sceptical message from one for one and one for two.
However, him now he's going to put that scepticism to one side, and he's going to discuss various other sceptical systems of philosophy,
in particular the ancient and modern views of the external world, which I'm going to fairly briefly summarise.
So of the ancient philosophy, that's one for three, he's basically attacking Aristotelian ism, scholastic views.
He picks, particularly on the fictions of the ancient philosophy concerning substances and substantial forms and accidents and occult qualities.
He thinks these are fictions. The most judicious philosophers, such as Locke,
consider that our ideas of bodies are nothing but collections formed from the mind of the formed by the mind of the ideas of the several distinct,
sensible qualities of which objects are composed. But the kind of confusions that he's already explained in one for two lead us to
think that there's some a single thing that retains its identity through time.
We ascribe an identity to the changeable succession.
And so ancient philosophers, the Aristotelian invent this notion of substance or original and first matter giving a name to this kind of fiction.
We also imagine the original substance to be simple and compounded because we're thinking of it as a principle of union.
So when we have these perceptions over time and we run them together in our imagination,
we fail to distinguish between them and think there is something unified to them.
Hume has this idea that the unity over time identity over time actually goes along with unchanged ability,
and the ancient philosophers therefore think that there is something simple and uniform underlying it.
This is where they get their theory of substance. So what is it that makes a difference between different substances?
Well, the the peripatetic the Aristotelian invent this idea of substantial forms.
They think of the qualities of objects as accidents,
accidental qualities like colour and figure somehow in hearing in the substance that they formed is they
have a distinction between the substantial form which kind of coat is the main body of the substance.
And then they think of the accidents, the the perceptual qualities, the colours and so forth as somehow stuck onto this in hearing in it.
But there are no impressions from which these ideas can be derived. So these ancient philosophers are supposing a substance supporting which they do
not understand and an accident supported of which they have as imperfect idea,
the whole system therefore is entirely incomprehensible. At one point, he alludes back to his theory of causal inference,
and we've seen actually the passage one four three nine cropped up when we were discussing John Wright's view of the new hue.
The idea that we when we see RNA followed by a B repeatedly we see RNA, we find ourselves thinking about a B and expecting it.
And we we might confuse that the that the almost irresistible tendency to expect to be when we see RNA,
we might confuse that with the in conceive ability of occurring without B.
And Hume suggests that this happens with the ancient philosophers as well.
The just conclusion would be that we have no idea of power or agency separate from the mind and belonging to causes.
Of course, that's alluding back to his earlier discussion.
But what the ancient philosophers do seduced by this confusion is to invent the words faculty and occult quality.
They need only say that any phenomenon which puzzles them arises from a faculty or an occult quality.
The section ends with a very amusing paragraph,
humans suggested that the ancient philosophers effectively the Aristotelian theory is simply built on fictions of the imagination.
And amongst those are the tendency to attribute to objects the same characteristics that we feel within ourselves.
We've just seen that in the case of this sort of projective idea of causation.
But amongst all the instances where in the peripatetic have shown that they were guided by every trivial propensity of the imagination,
no one is more remarkable. The mayor's sympathies, antipathy and horrors of a vacuum.
There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature to bestow on external objects the very same emotions which it observes in itself.
This inclination is true, is suppressed by a little reflection and only takes place in children, poets and the ancient philosophers.
We must pardon children because of their age poets, because they profess to follow implicitly the suggestions of their fancy,
but what excuse shall we find to justify our philosophers in such signal of weakness?
Rather insulting conclusion to the section. Well, it's quite an important passage, however, because the links with.
A very important passage at the beginning of the discussion of the modern philosophy.
Because Hume points out that it might seem that he here is being very unfair.
Go back to his discussion of induction. And clearly he believes in induction.
He gives rules by which to judge of causes and effects and so forth.
He believes in causal reasoning. But his theory of causal reasoning is entirely built on the imagination on custom.
And yet here he is criticising the Aristotelian philosophers for basing their views entirely on the imagination.
So how can he justify this? In order to justify myself, I must distinguish in the imagination betwixt the principles which are permanent,
irresistible and universal, such as the customary transition from causes to effects and from effects to causes.
And the principles which are changeable, weak and irregular,
such as those I have just now taken notice of the sympathies, antipathy, these horrors of a vacuum, all that stuff.
The former are the foundation of all our thoughts and actions so that that upon their removal.
Human nature must immediately perish and go to ruin. The latter are neither unavoidable to mankind nor necessary.
Also much as useful in the conduct of life. But on the contrary,
are observed only to take place in weak minds and being opposite to the other principles
of conduct and reasoning may easily be subverted by due contrast and opposition.
For this reason, the former are received by philosophy and the latter rejected.
And that's a very important passage.
Hume has shown or thinks he's shown that all sorts of beliefs that we might have thought were based on reason are not.
He wants to advocate some of those. He wants to advocate belief based on custom on induction.
But he wants to reject the kinds of imaginative fictions that the ancient philosophers and here he is,
trying to draw a distinction between different imaginative principles.
Some of them are permanent, irresistible and universal, notably custom.
Some of them are are not. They are capricious, changeable, weak, irregular.
Now we'll see later in in the conclusion of book one,
that this attempt at a distinction comes under serious pressure and because it comes under serious pressure, it actually throws.
It threatens Hume's entire system. But we'll come to that in the final lecture.
OK, moving on now, two of the modern philosophy, we've seen that first paragraph,
the modern philosophy, the philosophy of Locke representative realism.
Claims to be based on the solid, permanent and consistent principles of the imagination,
but Hume is now going to argue that actually it's not that it has profound problems arising from the primary secondary quality distinction.
Now, he thinks that the best argument for the primary secondary quality distinction is derived from the variations of sensory impressions,
depending on our health constitution, situation, etc. So the colour which something appears varies.
It may vary according to the condition of myself. Suppose I have jaundice or something like that, or the conditions of lighting,
etc. So we naturally draw a distinction between the intrinsic qualities of something the primary qualities, spatial temporal qualities and so forth.
And the said the secondary qualities, which are the qualities which it appears to have the visual qualities smell, taste, the sensory qualities.
Now, she is certain that when different impressions of the same sense arise from any object,
every one of these impressions has not a resembling quality existent in the object.
So if you see something from different perspectives and it looks different from those different perspectives,
it can't have qualities conforming to all of those different perspectives because they differ from each other.
Now from like effects, we presume, like causes, many of the impressions of colour, sound, etc. are confessed to be nothing but external existences.
And to arise from causes which in no way resemble them. These impressions are in appearance, nothing different from the other impressions of colour,
sound, etc. We conclude, therefore, that they are all of them derived from a like or origin.
So if I have differing sensations of the same sense about some object, they can't all be truthful.
But since they all come from a similar source, the right conclusion is that none of them faithfully reflect the object itself.
OK. Now, Hume is going to attack the primary secondary quality distinction, and he takes an argument of Barclays, George Barclays.
And what he's going to argue is that we can't actually make sense of objective primary qualities.
So the point of the primary secondary quality distinction is that some qualities the spatial temporal qualities,
things like shape and size, for example, and motion are actually there in the objects.
They are objective properties, whereas things like colour and touch and smell, those are secondary qualities and not really in the objects.
And Hugh tends to think of them as only in the mind.
I think actually, that's a misinterpretation of logic, but let's not get that into here.
So what you means now is going to argue is that actually we cannot form any objective
conception of primary qualities if the secondary qualities are not objective,
then nor can the primary ones be either.
So as the example of primary qualities, Hume takes solidity because when we think of the distinction between an object,
an empty space, it's solidity that distinguishes the object.
Colour is a secondary quality we can't think of, that is an objective thing.
The idea of solidity is that of two objects which cannot penetrate each other.
So understanding solidity requires having some antecedent grasp of what an object is.
And with colour and solidity itself excluded, there's nothing left to give it.
So we try to form the idea of a solid object. We think, oh, well, a solid object is one that excludes another solid object.
Yes, but what is it excluding? Well, it's something spatial. But the only way we can get spatial ideas, according to him, is either from site.
But that involves colour and ideas of colour, a purely subjective, or it involves touch, which again brings us back to solidity.
So actually, we cannot form any satisfactory objective idea of matter.
So Hume elaborates the argument further and then he sums up.
Thus, there is a direct and total opposition betwixt our reason and our senses.
Or more properly,
speaking betwixt those conclusions we formed from cause and effect and those that persuade us of the continued and independent existence of body.
So causal reasoning showed or seemed to show that the secondary qualities aren't objective.
But if we can't appeal to the secondary qualities, it seems we cannot form any coherent objective idea of primary qualities either.
So just going back when I headed that, a causal argument.
Notice that's what Hume is alluding to when he talks about opposition between our reason and our senses is that passage can seem a bit confusing.
But here he's talking about causal reasoning. And here is the causal reasoning that seems to show that secondary qualities are only in the mind.
OK. So that problem, this conflict between reason and the senses will play quite a lot, a significant part in 147 in the conclusion of this book.
So we're we're seeing here a lot of sceptical issues that are going to come back and haunt him later.
Now, one, two, one four, five of the materiality of the soul. This is a section of the treaties that is very often neglected.
If you look at books on Hume, you'll often find they have no discussion of this at all, actually at the time.
It was a very important section in the letter, from a gentleman to his friend in Edinburgh,
where Hume is responding to an abusive pamphlet which accused him of all sorts of appalling atheistic views.
One for five featured quite strongly. We saw one, four five actually in the first lecture, and we'll come back to that shortly.
Interestingly, when Hume starts out in one, four five,
he seems to be much more optimistic about giving a good account of the mind than he does of matter.
We've seen that in one four two one four three one four four. His theory of matter is very sceptical indeed.
But now he's turning to the internal world to our minds.
And he says that there won't be any such contradictions here.
That remains the case until the appendix published in 1740,
where Hume actually discovered that there were real problems, though he's not very clear about what they are.
OK, so he starts off in one for five after that initial paragraph,
he attacks the notion of mental substance and the related notion of inhibition, the usual stuff.
There's no impression from which substance or invasion those ideas could be copied, so we don't have any such ideas.
Well, someone might try to evade that by saying we do have a notion of a substance, but we don't get the notion of a substance from an impression.
It's not an idea that's copied from an impression. What we mean by a substance is something which may exist by itself.
So we've got, as it were a definite description of what substance is.
And we have this paragraph where Hume says the trouble with that definition is that according to that definition,
every one of our perceptions will count as a substance. Now, this is very peculiar humans using the severability principle,
the idea that anything that we can separate in our minds is really distinct and could be separated.
To argue that any one of our impressions could, in principle, exist by itself.
Outside of our mind. That seems very, very peculiar and probably incoherent.
But this features quite a lot in this section and the next on personal identity,
so it's worth bearing in mind what a strange view of perceptions Hugh has.
He thinks that our ideas and impressions could, in principle, reside outside of mind.
We'll come to his theory of mines before long, which helps to make some sense of that.
Over a number of paragraphs, about a dozen paragraphs, Hume discusses the issue, sorry, 10 paragraphs.
Hume discusses the issue of location and extension of perceptions.
This is quite an important part to read.
It helps to throw light on the argument we've just discussed from one four four where Hume is talking about where our idea of solidity comes from,
the idea we have of a solid body as based on either visual or tactile perceptions.
Because he's going to say that perceptions that aren't visual or tactile actually have no location.
So an object may exist and yet be nowhere.
And it's here that Hume was referring when in one three two going way back when he discussed the nature of our idea of causation.
And you know, he starts off saying that causation involves priority in time, of course, to affect and also contiguity.
And at that point, he puts in a footnote saying, we'll see later.
There's an issue here. This is the issue. You can have causation between mental perceptions,
even though those mental perceptions have no physical location and therefore cannot have physical contiguity.
There's also a passage here that he's referred to from another footnote in one 14 where he's discussing the idea of necessary connexion.
And it seems to very much support the sort of subjective it claims that he's making there.
He says it's just a mistake, an illusion when we think of the taste of a fig as actually physically located inside the fig.
And the cross reference seems to imply we're making the same sort of mistake when we attribute power to objects.
That's something that simply couldn't exist there.
So we've talked about all the apparent subjective ism in one three 14 before, but this is an important passage to which he's referring.
OK, we've got a dozen paragraphs, which I wouldn't worry about reading in detail, but skate through them.
Humans having a bit of fun with Spinoza. Spinoza has this supposed hideous hypothesis, which everybody thinks is appalling.
The idea that the world is just one single thing and that all the objects in the world are modifications of this simple substance.
He talk so Spinoza is noted for talking about God or nature and identifying God with nature, which is this single thing.
And this is supposed to be awful and atheistic and such like.
And what humans noticed is that there's an analogy between Espinosa's view of the world and many Orthodox people's view of the mind.
Because people think of the mind as being a simple,
unchanging substance that somehow nevertheless has mode's properties which are our ideas and our impressions.
And Hume is pointing out that exactly the same kind of objections that could be put against Spinoza can be put against this view of the the the mind.
OK, so that's just a very quick summary of the of the early parts of 145.
The most important part of 145 I discussed in our first lecture, and it's where he attacks the anti materialist argument,
the argument that have been used against Hobbs to say that matter, motion and matter cannot possibly cause thought.
So here are some relevant passages to consider the matter, April or anything may produce anything.
My motion and matter and thought are constantly united,
which being all the circumstances that enter into the idea of cause and effect, we can pronounce them cause and effect.
The constant conjunction of objects constitutes the very essence of cause and effect.
So this is one of the most important sections where Hume applies his analysis of causation.
And this isn't sceptical. This is positive.
He is saying a motion and matter can cause fault because we have constant conjunction where we've got constant conjunction.
We can attribute causation. All objects which are found to be constantly conjoined are upon that account, only to be regarded as causes and effects.
So we've seen this argument before, the other important section where Hume will apply his analysis of causation to draw positive conclusions.
Also, incidentally about mental causation comes in the discussion of liberty and necessity.
That's in treaties two, three, one and two three two. We're not going to be covering that further.
But I did discuss that in the first lecture. There's a slightly puzzling conclusion to one four five, which suggests some last minute editing.
So. A point about the treaties is that Hume initially wrote it to include some discussions of religion.
It does have some barbs against religion. We saw when he was discussing the imagination a few lectures ago, he illustrates,
for example, Association of Ideas with various religious examples like,
you know, when we go to someone who goes to the Holy Land is influenced by it and it enlivens their belief and that sort of thing.
But we know from a letter to Henry Hume Lord Keynes in 1737, which was two years before the treatise was published,
we know that Hume was in the process of taking out of the treaties,
various religious discussions or rather anti-religious discussions, notably on miracles.
And he actually sent Canes a copy of his discussion of miracles that he'd taken out of the treaties at that point.
Well, we have a clear indication here that the treaty was originally going to have a discussion of the immortality of the soul.
But it came out, but there's just a mention to it in the last couple of sentences.
If you want to know what Hume had to say about the immortality of the so, he wrote an essay on that topic, which was only published posthumously.
He considered it too dangerous to publish during his life.
It's very interesting and and succinct essay, a nice epitome of many of the principles of his philosophy.
OK. Finally, today we get on to personal identity. It's one of the very famous sections of the treaties.
He uses the coffee principle again to deny that we have any idea of the self that conforms to anything like the conventional understanding of it,
a self which retains perfect identity and simplicity through time.
When I look inside myself, I don't find any impression of self.
But I find plenty of other perceptions.
I always stumble on some particular perception or other of heat or cold light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure.
I never can catch myself at any time without a perception and never observe anything but the perception.
So if we try to think of what legitimate idea of self we could have, it ends up just being a bundle of perceptions.
Just like our legitimate idea of a substance like gold, for example, turns out being to be a bundle of qualities that we associate with gold.
So the genuine idea of self is nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity,
and they're in a perpetual flux and movement. The mind is a kind of theatre where several perceptions successively make their appearance.
There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different.
The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They the successive perceptions only that constitute the mind.
Nor have we the most distant notion of the place where these scenes are represented.
So he seems to be saying that the mind is literally just a bundle of perceptions because that seems to be the only conception that we can form of it.
Now think back to where Hume was saying that, you can imagine.
Perceptions existing without a mind.
Well, if a mine just is a bundle of perceptions, then you can imagine there being different sized bundles and why not a bundle of just one of them?
And one can be removed from a bundle and still exist, apparently.
It's not obviously a coherent view, but.
There we have it. Now, when Hume comes to explain why we think of ourselves as having a united, coherent continuing self,
he uses much the same kind of reasoning that he's used in the case of external objects.
Because we with external objects, we see a similarity of resemblance between our different perceptions,
and we imagine we have the fiction of some continuing thing binding them together.
Will we do the same kind of thing with the mind?
And he talks also about the similarity or the unity over time that we attribute to plants and animals.
Because we see them changing very slightly over time, we have resembling perceptions,
but also coherent perceptions as an animal grows and so forth or a plant grows.
And this gradual change facilitates the transition of the mind from one object to another, from one perception to another over time,
in other words, and renders its passage as smooth as if it contemplated one continued object.
So the feeling of contemplating a gradually changing thing is to us very similar
to the feeling of contemplating something that is completely unchanging. And so we naturally confuse the two.
So again, as with external objects, part of us realises that the perceptions are not the same,
but we are imaginatively very tempted to think of them as the same.
So we resolve this absurdity by feigning, in other words,
coming up with a fiction of some new and unintelligible principle that connects the objects together.
Thus, we run into the notion of a soul and self and substance to disguise the variation.
So again, we're coming up with a kind of fiction, an imaginary thing that somehow provides a unity to these perceptions,
which we recognise on one level are in fact different from each other over time.
But we all see our imaginations are seduced by the similarity or the gradual change to assume that there is something united there,
something that self identical over time. Hume corroborates this by a reference to the circumstances in which we are inclined
to do this when changes are proportionately small and when they're very gradual,
we're far more likely to think of this kind of identity over time than when the changes a sudden.
Personal identity turns out to be just another instance of the same kind of thing.
The identity,
which we ascribe to the mind of man is only a fictitious one and of a like kind with that which we attribute to vegetables and animal bodies.
So our notions of personal identity proceed entirely from the smooth and uninterrupted progress of the thought along a train of connected ideas.
Again, just the same kind of thing that happens with the external world.
Contiguity plays a little role here, because he said, as we discussed in one five,
that most of our perceptions actually don't have any physical location, so spatial contiguity as any right can't play a role.
Temporal contiguity doesn't play much of a role because we think of ourselves as identical.
Over a long period of time. But resemblance and causation do play a big role, and memory produces resemblance when we remember something.
The idea of memory we take to be similar to the thing that is remembered.
And our concern about our future, the fact that we project into the future and plan for things we think of our our future perceptions,
that's adding an important element of causation. You've also got causation playing a role in memory.
And memory is obviously crucial in providing our source of past perceptions.
So there's something to write in John Locke's theory of personal identity,
Locke had attributed personal identity to continuity of consciousness over time and hence to memory humans here,
pointing out that memory plays a very crucial role. But of course, he's seeing it as a source of perceptions which whose similarity,
whose resemblance and causal linkage leads us falsely to think of there being an identity there when really there isn't.
So he's got a sceptical theory of personal identity, unlike Locke.
Now, notoriously.
Not that far after he had published this 21 months between end of January 17, thirty nine and end of October, beginning of November 17 40.
Hume added an appendix to book three of the treatise on the appendix, amongst other things, contained serious doubts about personal identity.
Upon a more strict review of the section concerning personal identity,
I find myself involved in such a labyrinth that I must confess I neither know how to read,
how to correct my former opinions nor how to render them consistent.
In short, there are two principles which I cannot render consistent, nor is it in my power to renounce either of them.
These that all are distinct perceptions of distinct existences and that the mind never perceives any real connexion amongst distinct existences.
Did our perceptions either end here in something simple, an individual, or did the mind perceive some real connexion amongst them?
There would be no difficulty in the case. He says very little.
About what his problem is. And he said, I can't render these two principles consistent.
But actually, the two principles are not inconsistent. So there must be some other assumptions that he's making that cause this inconsistency.
And this is one of those cases where scholars have been attracted in droves
towards a textual problem precisely because of the paucity of the evidence.
There is so little textual evidence on what Hume's problem is here.
We've only got the section of personal identity and a few paragraphs in the appendix.
There is lots of scope for interpreters to come up with their own view of what exactly is going on here.
I'm not going to speculate.
But I will draw attention to one popular idea, partly because this, I think, gives an indication of why Hume's problem is a very, very serious one.
It's called the bundling problem.
So Hume has explained how we are seduced into false attributions of identity because we see similarity between our various perceptions.
And we falsely suppose them identical because our mind moves easily between them.
OK, so that might explain why I falsely think of myself as having a simplicity when I really don't because I run over my various perceptions,
I see a similar similarity there. My mind goes easily from one to another.
I naturally think of myself yesterday as the same as myself now.
But if we're thinking of personal identity at. Then the crucial question is, why do I think of myself as separate from others?
And when I consider the various perceptions that I might be likely to confuse together.
They only contain my own perceptions.
And I never have the slightest inclination to conflate your perceptions with mine because I never actually perceive your perceptions, only my own.
So in response to the question, you know?
How do we come to believe in personal identity, humans saying we are seduced by the similarity amongst perceptions?
The natural question to ask him is who is seduced? What is it that's making the mistake?
It looks like you have to presuppose some self to which those perceptions appear and not other perceptions.
In order to make any sense of the story at all. So it looks like there's a risk of real incoherence in Hume's view.
And some people have thought that that was at the root of the problem that he's alluding to in the appendix, but it's really hard to know.
In subsequent works, personal identity is hardly mentioned, we get a very a hint of it in the dialogues, and that's it.
In the later work, in the enquiry, the sapra ability, that principle doesn't feature at all.
So it may be that Hume had come to realise that his view about perceptions existing, potentially independently of a mind, is simply incoherent.
We don't know. Unfortunately, when Hume changes his mind, he doesn't announce the fact.
In general, he just does it silently, and we're left to wonder what his real ultimate views might have been.
Thank you very much.